A brief follow-up . . .
Many columnists and commentators now have either comment sections or their email addresses with their columns. The sad and infuriating thing is, they totally ignore them. Joe Klein is the worst; he has stated outright that he ignores them. (God forbid you take feedback from your audience, Joe!) But as near as I can see, the "mainstream media" folks all ignore them.
David Broder gets tons of email filled with scorn. Does he adjust his policies? Heck no; he pens a column about how out-of-touch the emailers are! (They're your audience, you doofus!) Shailagh Murray writes a sneering article about Chris Dodd actually--heaven save us--standing up for Civil Rights by blocking the horrific telecom amnesty bill. Every single comment is negative. Does she do anything about it, or even acknowledge it? Heck no! She just goes right on peddling her tripe.
Honestly, it makes me want to fly to Washington with "Mr. Spoon" (as we call him here) and bend these clowns over my knee, paddle them, and then send them to their rooms with their internet privileges revoked. Bad columnists! Go to your rooms!
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Ignoring The People
So much for frivolity.
One thing that's been driving me absolutely nuts since the Democrats won back Congress is how much the inside-the-beltway folks are completely ignoring their constituents.
Personally, I'm used to being ignored; my Senators are both hard-right Republicans (including the execrable John Cornyn), and "my" Representative is Lamar Smith, who doesn't "represent" me in any way whatsoever. I hate it, but I'm used to it.
On the other hand, it really frosts my country ass that these Democrats that were put into Congress specifically to stand up to President Bush are caving in left and right. And it angers me even more that they not only flagrantly ignore their constituents, but also, like Nancy Pelosi, actually scorn them. Pelosi sneered at people protesting her limp Speakership by saying "If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have 'Impeach Bush' across their chest, it's the First Amendment."
Yes, Nancy; exercising their Constitutional rights--which you're trying to give away at the behest of a President with a 24% approval rating--is so annoying!
As if that isn't bad enough, the "liberal mainstream media" continues to pump out the meme that Democrats are stupid and doomed if they stand up to Bush. With the support for the war hovering around 30%, and with Democratic support for the war in single digits, the press nonetheless continues to opine that Democrats who stand up for civil rights, for pulling us out of Iraq, for returning to sane domestic policies, are stupid or naive or self-immolating.
You can read it over and over: Howard Kurtz, David Broder, David Brooks, Shailagh Murray, David Ignatius . . . pretty much anywhere. There are a few who step outside this nonsense, like Paul Krugman and Dan Froomkin (See? Not all Jews support neocons/Likud!), but in the main, the press is not listening to the people they theoretically serve. And they wonder why their subscription numbers are decreasing!
When the politicians we elect and the press that's supposed to keep an eye on them aren't paying attention to what "the people" want, where does that leave us? Personally it leaves me battling fury and depression.
One thing that's been driving me absolutely nuts since the Democrats won back Congress is how much the inside-the-beltway folks are completely ignoring their constituents.
Personally, I'm used to being ignored; my Senators are both hard-right Republicans (including the execrable John Cornyn), and "my" Representative is Lamar Smith, who doesn't "represent" me in any way whatsoever. I hate it, but I'm used to it.
On the other hand, it really frosts my country ass that these Democrats that were put into Congress specifically to stand up to President Bush are caving in left and right. And it angers me even more that they not only flagrantly ignore their constituents, but also, like Nancy Pelosi, actually scorn them. Pelosi sneered at people protesting her limp Speakership by saying "If they were poor and they were sleeping on my sidewalk, they would be arrested for loitering, but because they have 'Impeach Bush' across their chest, it's the First Amendment."
Yes, Nancy; exercising their Constitutional rights--which you're trying to give away at the behest of a President with a 24% approval rating--is so annoying!
As if that isn't bad enough, the "liberal mainstream media" continues to pump out the meme that Democrats are stupid and doomed if they stand up to Bush. With the support for the war hovering around 30%, and with Democratic support for the war in single digits, the press nonetheless continues to opine that Democrats who stand up for civil rights, for pulling us out of Iraq, for returning to sane domestic policies, are stupid or naive or self-immolating.
You can read it over and over: Howard Kurtz, David Broder, David Brooks, Shailagh Murray, David Ignatius . . . pretty much anywhere. There are a few who step outside this nonsense, like Paul Krugman and Dan Froomkin (See? Not all Jews support neocons/Likud!), but in the main, the press is not listening to the people they theoretically serve. And they wonder why their subscription numbers are decreasing!
When the politicians we elect and the press that's supposed to keep an eye on them aren't paying attention to what "the people" want, where does that leave us? Personally it leaves me battling fury and depression.
Something Totally Frivolous
This is completely frivolous. You have been duly notified.
I have a son who's only 9 and loves the usual 9-year-old boy stuff; cartoons, superheroes, transformers, and that sort of thing. He dragged me to see Transformers in the theater (which wasn't nearly as painful to watch as I was afraid it was going to be). And of course he had to have the latest Fantastic 4 movie as soon as it came out.
So here's the thing: Jessica Alba, while a pretty wooden actress, is a babe; no doubt about it. A very attractive woman (although personally I prefer her with her natural brunette hair color). And what I can't figure out is how they managed to make her look unattractive in this movie. I mean, seriously. She looked fine in the first one; why does she look so weird in this one?
Partly it's her hair; they did something to it that makes it look like it was ironed flat, like an early-'60s folk singer. And partly it's those blue contacts; like a lot of people who don't wear contacts regularly, she does this round-eyed thing when she has them in. But somehow, throughout the whole movie I was distracted by this strange-looking woman wearing spandex who sort of looked like Jessica Alba, but not really. It was weird.
Yes, these are the things that sometimes occupy my tiny brain. Hey, I told you this was frivolous. I don't rant about politics all the time!
I have a son who's only 9 and loves the usual 9-year-old boy stuff; cartoons, superheroes, transformers, and that sort of thing. He dragged me to see Transformers in the theater (which wasn't nearly as painful to watch as I was afraid it was going to be). And of course he had to have the latest Fantastic 4 movie as soon as it came out.
So here's the thing: Jessica Alba, while a pretty wooden actress, is a babe; no doubt about it. A very attractive woman (although personally I prefer her with her natural brunette hair color). And what I can't figure out is how they managed to make her look unattractive in this movie. I mean, seriously. She looked fine in the first one; why does she look so weird in this one?
Partly it's her hair; they did something to it that makes it look like it was ironed flat, like an early-'60s folk singer. And partly it's those blue contacts; like a lot of people who don't wear contacts regularly, she does this round-eyed thing when she has them in. But somehow, throughout the whole movie I was distracted by this strange-looking woman wearing spandex who sort of looked like Jessica Alba, but not really. It was weird.
Yes, these are the things that sometimes occupy my tiny brain. Hey, I told you this was frivolous. I don't rant about politics all the time!
Friday, October 19, 2007
You know, it used to be that "conservatives" (with a small "c") were the ones who wanted the Constitution to be adhered to strictly and stringently. It was conservatives who wanted limited government, a balanced budget, and a government that was most assuredly made up of three coequal branches. It was conservatives who said, "Government isn't the solution; government is the problem." It was conservatives who told us not to trust the government.
Not any more, I guess.
In an article in the "Weekly Standard," Michael Goldfarb instead tells us what the new Conservative (big "C") position is: we should all shut the heck up and do whatever the government tells us to do, because it's the "patriotic" thing. Because now we can trust the government. And of course it doesn't matter that they've stripped habeus corpus away; these good ol' boys that are in charge couldn't possibly want to jail and arrest anyone but "bad guys." These folks are good people, and will always do the right thing!
Forgive me if I bear in mind this idiotic war in Iraq, the fact that these "good people" were illegally spying on folks for years, and the fact that they now want to bomb Iran to "smithereens." (Hey, Norman Podhoretz said it; I ain't making it up).
How on Earth are we going to make it through the next year intact with these nuts in charge? Tom Paine would have started shooting people by now. I think Heinlein put it well in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls," believe it or not:
I'm not one for hysterics and crying "Wolf!"; I've got friends who do it a lot better than I do. But in this case, how can I help it? I hope we make it through the next year intact.
Not any more, I guess.
In an article in the "Weekly Standard," Michael Goldfarb instead tells us what the new Conservative (big "C") position is: we should all shut the heck up and do whatever the government tells us to do, because it's the "patriotic" thing. Because now we can trust the government. And of course it doesn't matter that they've stripped habeus corpus away; these good ol' boys that are in charge couldn't possibly want to jail and arrest anyone but "bad guys." These folks are good people, and will always do the right thing!
Forgive me if I bear in mind this idiotic war in Iraq, the fact that these "good people" were illegally spying on folks for years, and the fact that they now want to bomb Iran to "smithereens." (Hey, Norman Podhoretz said it; I ain't making it up).
How on Earth are we going to make it through the next year intact with these nuts in charge? Tom Paine would have started shooting people by now. I think Heinlein put it well in "The Cat Who Walks Through Walls," believe it or not:
I sat down and shut up. I felt that I now understood the new regime: absolute freedom . . . except that any official from dogcatcher to supreme potentate could give any orders whatever to any private citizen at any time.
So it was “freedom” as defined by Orwell and Kafka, “freedom” as granted by Stalin and Hitler, “freedom” to pace back and forth in your cage. I wondered if the coming interrogation would be assisted by mechanical or electrical devices or by drugs, and felt sick at my stomach.
I'm not one for hysterics and crying "Wolf!"; I've got friends who do it a lot better than I do. But in this case, how can I help it? I hope we make it through the next year intact.
Saturday, October 6, 2007
Barack Obama's Lapels
I can't believe I'm even writing this, but that's the level political discourse has sunk to in this country, I guess.
Barack Obama is taking heat--and I honestly can't believe this--for saying he won't wear an American flag pin in his lapel. There are stories on Fox News, Time, and probably everywhere else.
This bugs me in so many ways it's hard to unravel, but the first thing is, isn't it bad enough that the press spends 'way more time talking about poll numbers and fund raising figures rather than what the candidates actually, you know, say they're going to do on healthcare or the environment or taxes. Now they're talking about a friggin' lapel pin. What next, what the candidates eat for breakfast? "Obama eats yogurt for breakfast! What an effete wimp!"
It also reminds me, disgustingly, of how much politics and the inside-the-beltway media are like High School. Doesn't matter how smart a guy is, doesn't matter what he stands for; it just matters what he looks like. Does he look "Presidential?" Oh my God, he wore a red tie today; what does that mean? And the pressure to conform to what the clique thinks. Don't do something out of principle; conform. Everyone must wear a lapel pin! Everyone must eat with Real Folks in a diner in New Hampshire in the dead of winter. Everyone must put on a flannel shirt and stride across a corn field in Iowa, post-harvest. Conform conform conform!
And the final thing is, ask yourself this: how many people out here in the "real world" wear lapel pins at all? Hell, in my industry damn few people wear suits, and those that do--salespeople and marketing people--are not exactly held in high regard by the technical folks. And I have never seen any of them wear lapel pins. (Here in Austin in the summer, most folks don't wear socks, let alone suits.)
I know it's different in the NorthEast to some degree, but even so most of the people I see all the time, in two states, wouldn't go near the $800+ suits the candidates all wear. They'd look kind of silly in a cornfield, or a tire repair shop, or laying pipe at the shipyard, or on a hacker writing code. And lapel pins? Feh.
So we have a manufactured flap over a piece of accoutrement that probably no one would have noticed if the press hadn't picked it up. And now the bloviators are trying to get Obama to regret it and conform.
Man. And people wonder why my generation is so darn cynical.
Barack Obama is taking heat--and I honestly can't believe this--for saying he won't wear an American flag pin in his lapel. There are stories on Fox News, Time, and probably everywhere else.
This bugs me in so many ways it's hard to unravel, but the first thing is, isn't it bad enough that the press spends 'way more time talking about poll numbers and fund raising figures rather than what the candidates actually, you know, say they're going to do on healthcare or the environment or taxes. Now they're talking about a friggin' lapel pin. What next, what the candidates eat for breakfast? "Obama eats yogurt for breakfast! What an effete wimp!"
It also reminds me, disgustingly, of how much politics and the inside-the-beltway media are like High School. Doesn't matter how smart a guy is, doesn't matter what he stands for; it just matters what he looks like. Does he look "Presidential?" Oh my God, he wore a red tie today; what does that mean? And the pressure to conform to what the clique thinks. Don't do something out of principle; conform. Everyone must wear a lapel pin! Everyone must eat with Real Folks in a diner in New Hampshire in the dead of winter. Everyone must put on a flannel shirt and stride across a corn field in Iowa, post-harvest. Conform conform conform!
And the final thing is, ask yourself this: how many people out here in the "real world" wear lapel pins at all? Hell, in my industry damn few people wear suits, and those that do--salespeople and marketing people--are not exactly held in high regard by the technical folks. And I have never seen any of them wear lapel pins. (Here in Austin in the summer, most folks don't wear socks, let alone suits.)
I know it's different in the NorthEast to some degree, but even so most of the people I see all the time, in two states, wouldn't go near the $800+ suits the candidates all wear. They'd look kind of silly in a cornfield, or a tire repair shop, or laying pipe at the shipyard, or on a hacker writing code. And lapel pins? Feh.
So we have a manufactured flap over a piece of accoutrement that probably no one would have noticed if the press hadn't picked it up. And now the bloviators are trying to get Obama to regret it and conform.
Man. And people wonder why my generation is so darn cynical.
Monday, October 1, 2007
Trusting Business vs. Trusting Government
I was just thinking the other day about "liberals" vs. "conservatives," and came to the realization that they both are kind of silly when taken too seriously.
Think about this: Conservatism, to some degree, can be boiled down to "let the market work it out." In other words, they have a lot of trust in Big Business, but distrust Big Government. Liberals, on the other hand, have a lot of trust for Big Government, but distrust Big Business.
The obvious internal contraction of these positions seems to slip by most everyone.
If you can trust Big Government, why are you so distrustful of Big Business? And vice-versa? A big, faceless Entity that is run by a whole lot of People You Don't Know; trusting either one of them too far seems the height of folly to me.
Take global warming, for example. The impression that I get from conservatives is that they would like the Invisible Hand of the market to deal with it. The thinking being (I guess) that eventually it would become more economical to do something about global warming than ignoring it, and the companies would switch to more environmentally sound policies. (Or alternatively, customers would stop buying environmentally damaging products, forcing producers to come out with environmentally sound products.)
I don't believe it, however. If watching the auto industry fight tooth and nail against any government-mandated innovation--including seatbelts, for crying out loud!--is an reasonable example, my belief is that, say, energy companies would continue to burn coal and oil and whatever else in as polluting a way as possible until they ran out of coal and oil. At which point they would demand government subsidies for alternative energy research, and start selling home and personal filtration systems to prevent folks from getting sick on all the gunk in the air.
But, you know, I'm a cynic.
On the flip side, the believers in government would have the government crack down on everyone in the industry. The natural follow-on to that--that business will become so inefficient that it will die or jack up the price to the stratosphere--seems to escape some folks. So they will squawk when their gas rises to $7 a gallon and their monthly heating bill rises to $1000. And then they'll want government to do something about that.
These are extremes, obviously. I'm exaggerating for effect. But the point is, you have to have a balance. There are some thing business is better at (goods and services at low cost--how many stories have you read about overbudget government projects?), and there are other things (worker safety and watching the environment being a big pair) that Big Business has a proven track record--hundreds of years, baby!--of sucking at.
So let the radicals at either end rail on--there wouldn't be any progress without pushing the boundaries. But let's not go overboard, because Big Anything taken at its word is dangerous, it seems to me.
Think about this: Conservatism, to some degree, can be boiled down to "let the market work it out." In other words, they have a lot of trust in Big Business, but distrust Big Government. Liberals, on the other hand, have a lot of trust for Big Government, but distrust Big Business.
The obvious internal contraction of these positions seems to slip by most everyone.
If you can trust Big Government, why are you so distrustful of Big Business? And vice-versa? A big, faceless Entity that is run by a whole lot of People You Don't Know; trusting either one of them too far seems the height of folly to me.
Take global warming, for example. The impression that I get from conservatives is that they would like the Invisible Hand of the market to deal with it. The thinking being (I guess) that eventually it would become more economical to do something about global warming than ignoring it, and the companies would switch to more environmentally sound policies. (Or alternatively, customers would stop buying environmentally damaging products, forcing producers to come out with environmentally sound products.)
I don't believe it, however. If watching the auto industry fight tooth and nail against any government-mandated innovation--including seatbelts, for crying out loud!--is an reasonable example, my belief is that, say, energy companies would continue to burn coal and oil and whatever else in as polluting a way as possible until they ran out of coal and oil. At which point they would demand government subsidies for alternative energy research, and start selling home and personal filtration systems to prevent folks from getting sick on all the gunk in the air.
But, you know, I'm a cynic.
On the flip side, the believers in government would have the government crack down on everyone in the industry. The natural follow-on to that--that business will become so inefficient that it will die or jack up the price to the stratosphere--seems to escape some folks. So they will squawk when their gas rises to $7 a gallon and their monthly heating bill rises to $1000. And then they'll want government to do something about that.
These are extremes, obviously. I'm exaggerating for effect. But the point is, you have to have a balance. There are some thing business is better at (goods and services at low cost--how many stories have you read about overbudget government projects?), and there are other things (worker safety and watching the environment being a big pair) that Big Business has a proven track record--hundreds of years, baby!--of sucking at.
So let the radicals at either end rail on--there wouldn't be any progress without pushing the boundaries. But let's not go overboard, because Big Anything taken at its word is dangerous, it seems to me.
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